TeenHelp - Triggering (Suicide): Woman who encouraged boyfriend to commit suicide covicted of manslaughter

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Woman who encouraged boyfriend to commit suicide covicted of manslaughter

Woman who encouraged boyfriend to commit suicide over text found guilty. Not including a link because some of them have the text messages and I feel they are overly triggering for the site.

What are your thoughts? There are a whole lot of people who are saying she should be convicted of murder and I am, currently, unsure of how I feel.

When they first gathered her texts she was actually encouraging him to get help and told him getting help would end up making him feel better.

A couple days later it switched and she was discussing ways he could effectively die and was literally telling him he needed to act. He was making excuses and she told him things like "I'll take care of your family".

When I first heard about this I was very much one of the people that didn't think she should be on trial. But, after reading through the texts and the way she switched to encouraging...it has left me confused.

Still on the fence and would like to hear what others think.

Re: Woman who encouraged boyfriend to commit suicide covicted of manslaughter

This is a very interesting case. I am of he opinion that what she did was murder, as she urged him over a long period of time to kill himself. This demonstrates her intent was for him to die, as I refuse to believe that she was unaware of what she was doing the entire time, even if she was delusional according to the "Doctor" that the defense called for her.
She did not "wield the knife", as it were, but she is no less responsible in my mind. However, I do see how legally this is a challenge. The existing definitions of murder and manslaughter are written in a specific way to protect innocent people who are caught up by bad luck, which unfortunately sometimes means that truly evil people like her slip through the cracks. Manslaughter is a bit light, but it's what the State could get, unfortunately. They just wouldn't have been able to prosecute for murder. This is a landmark case, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of precedent it will set for future cases, especially those involving cyber-bullying.